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Gun Control

syadasti

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
US veterans have lived through wars but more people die in the US from gun violence than in US wars. Now's the time to launch at war against the NRA and gun makers:

There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution. That’s 120,130 more gun deaths than war deaths -- about 9 percent more, or nearly four typical years worth of gun deaths. And that’s using the most generous scholarly estimate of Civil War deaths, the biggest component of American war deaths.
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http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/aug/27/nicholas-kristof/more-americans-killed-guns-1968-all-wars-says-colu/
 
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AngryMetalsmith

AngryMetalsmith

Business is good, thanks for asking
Jun 4, 2006
22,041
12,732
I have no idea where I am
Pesqueeb said:
"There will be more of these; we absolutely know it; we also know that we will not change the circumstances that allow such episodes to recur. I am an optimist about most things, but not about this. Everyone around the world understands this reality too. It is the kind of thing that makes them consider America dangerous, and mad."

*I might have posted this before.
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We as a collective are stupid, aggressive, and dangerous. Our culture is dominated by the catering to the lowest common denominator. Rational and critical thinking are not something many aspire to these days. Instead it has been replaced with the pride of being uneducated or just stupid. We glorify mediocrity and thwart progress all in the name of our intense sense of self-righteous individualism.

Once thinking for ones self is diminished if not obliterated, then it becomes easy for an individual or a relatively small group to tell the herd what to think. Hence the NRA's strangle hold on this country. As long as we are willing to surrender our own free will to the masked form of "freedom", it will always be this way. Ironic or not, those who scream the loudest about their freedom, are those who are so willing to let someone else do the thinking for them.
 
syadasti

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/roanoke-and-the-value-of-guns
And so, for all that we should still strive for an empathetic grasp of other people’s cultural symbols, the simple, unemotional, inarguable truth remains: when Richard Martinez—the father of Christopher Michael-Martinez, a twenty-year-old who was killed at the University of California Santa Barbara last year—called the N.R.A., and its fellow-travelers, complicit in the murder of his child, he stated the facts. Those who, in the face of all the evidence, still insist that guns are not the cause of the American epidemic of gun violence have decided that the deaths of yesterday’s victims, Alison Parker and Adam Ward—like those of the children at Newtown—are the cost, to be blithely endured, of the symbolic pleasures that guns provide. Since the cure is known for certain, those who refuse it can only have decided that they enjoy the disease.

For the deeper truth is that cars are not, or not only, symbols of autonomy. They are, in every sense, vehicles of it. Guns, however, have an almost entirely symbolic function. No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled; the dense and hysterical mythology of gun love has been refuted again and again. (The incident last week on the French train is good evidence of this point: unarmed defenders disarmed a terrorist with a military-style weapon. A huge proportion of luck and an inestimable supply of courage aided them. But the possession of guns played no role at all.) The few useful social functions that guns do have—in hunting or in killing varmints, as a rural man such as my father has to do—can be preserved even with tight regulations, as in Canada. Cars have to be, and are, controlled: we license their users and insist (or should) that they regularly prove their skills; we look out for and punish drunken or reckless users. If we only achieved, in the next few years, a regulation of guns equal to that of cars, we would be moving toward the real purpose of autonomy, which is to secure the freedom from fear as much as the freedom to act. Symbols matter. Lives matter more."
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johnbryanpeters

johnbryanpeters

Hero
Sep 27, 2001
36,799
18,344
Making moss sad in New Haven, Vermont
stevew said:
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Heh. When I was in basic training, I missed machine guns due to a bout with German measles. On a later duty assignment in Korea, we had a training day and a sergeant who disliked me tossed me an M60 and told me to field strip it. I did so using common sense. I had been reading maintenance bulletins and pointed out that it was missing a required modification to keep it from double-feeding. He never pestered me again.
 
Westy

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
55,966
22,011
Sleazattle
johnbryanpeters said:
Heh. When I was in basic training, I missed machine guns due to a bout with German measles. On a later duty assignment in Korea, we had a training day and a sergeant who disliked me tossed me an M60 and told me to field strip it. I did so using common sense. I had been reading maintenance bulletins and pointed out that it was missing a required modification to keep it from double-feeding. He never pestered me again.
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Common sense is the military's greatest enemy.
 
Serial Midget

Serial Midget

Al Bundy
Jun 25, 2002
13,053
1,897
Fort of Rio Grande
I think there are more guns than people here in Montana. It's not unusual to see open carry at Sam's Club or the mall, I recently saw guy in Sam's Club in full cowboy drag carrying 2 pistols Yosemite Sam style in his holster, he was also pushing his girl around in a shopping cart so it was kind of funny to me.

Edit: 85% of Montana gun deaths are suicides, rural people hate dying in old folks homes.
 
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Serial Midget

Serial Midget

Al Bundy
Jun 25, 2002
13,053
1,897
Fort of Rio Grande
The latest gun killing in Montana has local officials concerned for the well being of the suspect who may be without shoes and shelter as he hides out in the mountains near Helena.
 
AngryMetalsmith

AngryMetalsmith

Business is good, thanks for asking
Jun 4, 2006
22,041
12,732
I have no idea where I am
Americans love them sum gun violence.

A guy called wanting me to make a necklace from a bullet that went into his house and through his clothes just barely missing him. Says he wants something to remember it by since he could have died. WTF is wrong with people. This is not the goddamned wild west, nor is it a cartoon.
 
stevew

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
41,152
10,093
Westy said:
But that would be incorrect, because you never say anything.
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i'm pretty sure i've said i will never own a gun.

i'm about 99 percent sure i've never fired one.

do i hate people who own guns....no.

do i hate people who oppose gun ownership...no.

will the world be a better place without guns...probably not.

does it keep me up at night...no....insomnia does.
 
syadasti

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
stevew said:
will the world be a better place without guns...probably not.
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Extremely easy to prove wrong, are you that dense? Guns are far more effective tools than anything else at harming or killing people, suicides clearly show this and 2/3s of all US gun deaths are suicides. You're much more likely to kill yourself with a gun than be shot to death by someone else, intentionally or accidentally:

 
stevew

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
41,152
10,093
from personal experience syadasti....the two people i have known who have committed suicide and had access to a gun did not choose the gun....
 
syadasti

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
stevew said:
from personal experience syadasti....the two people i have known who have committed suicide and had access to a gun did not choose the gun....
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Anecdotal evidence is a not valid means of determining useful information about a population. So you're confirming you're not saying anything useful just as Westy stated. Thanks for nothing.
 
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